Wednesday, June 7, 2017

I’d
never hiked Big Elk Creek before, but despite the weight on my back and
the mud on parts of the trail, I was enjoying myself.

I’m
not in the best of shape, but I’m willing. I take up the rear, making
sure any Scouts we’re hiking with don’t get left behind. Ahead of me is
Sam, a Scout who’d never backpacked before in his life. He had a good
pack, but the hike was long, mostly uphill, and he was getting a little
tired. In front of him is Paul, my assistant Scoutmaster. He’s hiked
this trail before. We’re in good hands.

To
the left is the creek, bubbling over the rocks and through the tiny
meadows at the bottom of the valley. To the right, mountains, some
covered thickly with pine and aspen, others with tumbles of rock. There
are mountains beyond the creek too, and as we hike the mountains get
steeper, taller, and closer together. And we have a well-worn trail to
follow. And Paul is leading us. No worries.

We
cross yet another rock fall, stumbling here and there over a shifting
slab. We walk across more rocks. And even more rocks. But we’re talking
one to the other, marveling at the scenery.

That’s
funny. The creek is smaller. And a bit further to the left than before.
And – wait a minute – we’re climbing the side of the mountain, now
scrambling over the rocks, and the creek is retreating further to our
left.

“I
think we lost the trail,” Paul says as we three sit on convenient
boulders. “We shouldn’t be this high. We should be right next to the
creek. But that’s okay. We’ll just work our way down.”

Just work our way down.

Over
more rocks, now here and there punctuated with fallen trees, stripped
of their needles but their bare branches still poking up like fence
posts. We have to go through them, lest we turn around and lose
distance, further falling behind our companions who stayed on the trail
and are further ahead of us now. We wrestle our shoulders through the
trees and over the branches, our backpacks get caught. We’re thirsty.
Sam is out of water, so I share a bit of mine. And no matter how far we
walk, we can’t seem to get down the mountain. We can still see the creek
– we can even see the trail, brown amidst the meadow grasses, near the
stream’s banks. But fight as we might, we can’t lose much of the
altitude we’ve gained.

Gradually,
inch by inch, log by log, rock by rock, we fight our way down to the
trail. Our feet finally plod in the brown dust where we see our
companions’ footprints. We walk through a glad,e take a turn and we see
them, tents set up, a fire going. A few of them are climbing rocks.
Others are splashing in the creek.

“What took you so long?” Benson, a scout, asks.

“We got a little lost,” I said.

“There’s only one trail,” he said. “How’d you get lost?”

“We kinda found a new trail,” Paul said.

“You should have stuck with the real trail,” he said.

Yes,
we should have. But we were so distracted by the scenery and our
conversation, we didn’t notice we’d left the trail until the landscape
became a lot more difficult to traverse.

On
the way home, we followed the trail. Paul, Sam and I stuck together
again. This time we didn’t stray. “How’d we miss this?” Paul asked.
Because it was clear our wanderings up the rock fall and the
mountainside added at least an hour to our journey, as the hike from our
campsite to the big rock fall where we recognized we’d lost the trail
wasn’t all that long.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“We weren’t paying attention, that’s clear,” Paul added, laughing. “Or at least I wasn’t. And you two just followed me.”

Ah, the lesson.

You knew there’d be a lesson.

God
and life present us with two great influences: Our companions, and our
free agency. Used well, whether in tandem or opposition, those two great
influences will determine how difficult our journey through life will
be.

Paul
is a good companion. Experienced with the backcountry, with first aid,
even with backcountry rescue. But I let my trust in him override my
agency. Because, when we started climbing the rocks, I saw to my left,
just lower down the slope, where the trail again emerged from the rocks.
I could have used my agency to call out, “Paul, the trail’s down here!”
and though he was further ahead, he would have descended, got back on
the trail, and we would have joined our companions for a leisurely
evening. Instead, I ignored my own senses and followed that companion up
the difficult path, taking the trusting but hapless Sam with me.

Had
I listened to myself, had I believed what I saw with my own eyes, a
simple correction would have had us back on course. But I waited until
that course correction was much more difficult and time consuming.

I surrendered my agency and three of us paid the price.

Were
there times, I wonder, when one of the sons of Mosiah saw the correct
path, but instead of calling to his companions to set them on the right
way just went along with his friends, up that difficult road that led to
an angel descending from heaven and sending Alma the Younger into a
stupor in which he was wracked with torment. “Nevertheless, after wading
through much tribulation” he says in Mosiah Chapter 27, verse 28,
“repenting high unto death, the Lord in mercy hath seen fit to snatch me
out of an everlasting burning, and I am born of God.”

“My
soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of
iniquity,” he continues in verse 29. “I was in the darkest abyss; but
now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal
torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more.”

What
pain Mosiah’s sons and Alma the Younger – sons of the king, son of the
prophet – could have avoided had one of them, somewhere early in their
journey, noticed they were off the path if even only a little bit, and
said, “Gentlemen, the path we want is over there.”

A
quick correction based on what I could see with my own eyes would have
prevented a lot of weariness as we backpacked Big Elk Creek. I chose,
however, to surrender my agency – and three of us suffered the
consequences. May we all choose our companions wisely, and love them
enough to offer correction, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.

REALLY? AS IF IT WERE SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little. . .”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So you can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET – Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.